Twitter Glitch Led to Baldwin's Homophobic Meltdown

A Twitter bug may have prompted a UK Daily Mail reporter to allege Alec Baldwin’s wife tweeted during James Gandolfini’s funeral on Thursday. This provoked an expletive-laden, violent, and anti-gay series of tweets from the actor, who has repeatedly had anger management issues.

According to a Daily Mail examination, three of his wife’s tweets that seemed to be “posted at 8.47am, 9.53am, 10.17am and 11.09am” on Thursday were actually posted “three hours later than those times.” Twitter did not explain what was behind the glitch but the Mail discovered that the correct times–which can be found in the source code that users normally do not check–appeared on mobile devices even if the incorrect times showed up on computers.

This glitch led reporter George Stark to write the story that caused Baldwin’s meltdown. Baldwin has apologized but has not been held accountable by mainstream media organizations and groups like GLAAD that often enforce the country’s political correctness codes.

Baldwin deleted his Twitter account after he called Stark a “toxic little queen” and threatened to tweet at his funeral after he put his foot up his “a**” to “straighten” him out.

A Mail spokesman said the publication accepted Baldwin’s wife’s assertions that she did not tweet from the funeral” and apologized “for any distress caused.” The paper called the incident a “genuine misunderstanding caused by a baffling defect in the Twitter platform” and then urged Baldwin to “withdraw his homophobic and threatening remarks.”

Baldwin issued an apology on Friday night after his tweets sparked outrage, much of which was directed at Capital One, which employs him as a spokesman:

My ill-advised attack on George Stark of the Daily Mail had absolutely nothing to do with issues of anyone’s sexual orientation. My anger was directed at Mr. Stark for blatantly lying and disseminating libelous information about my wife and her conduct at our friend’s funeral service. As someone who fights against homophobia, I apologize.

I have worked, periodically, with numerous marriage equality organizations, especially over the past couple of years, to achieve the very rights that gay couples are earning by recent court decisions. I would not advocate violence against someone for being gay and I hope that my friends at GLAAD and the gay community understand that my attack on Mr. Stark in no way was the result of homophobia.

This quote above was contained in a letter Baldwin penned to GLAAD’s web page.